


This Is Just A Dream

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, First Time, Grief, M/M, POV Derek, Pining, Stiles Leaves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 16:15:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11234613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: It was raining the day that Stiles left him.Sometimes he wishes he could leave, too.





	This Is Just A Dream

**Author's Note:**

> So um, I've never posted for this fandom and that's nervous making? But here we go. This story came to me when I was writing something else and wouldn't leave me alone, so I took a break. Blame all of this fic on this song. https://youtu.be/V1AsJRln37A

The day Stiles leaves Beacon Hills, it rains. 

Appropriate, Derek thinks, watching as Stiles carried his scuffed up duffle to his Jeep. 

He'd seen that duffle on his floor, clothes spilling out as Stiles moved naked and sleepy around him, so many times it felt like he was losing more than just the man carrying it. 

Stupid to feel that loss when there was Stiles, hands swinging nervously at his side, eyes wide and tired and hopeful. 

“You could stay,” Derek says, the first time he's said it. 

Stiles flinches and looks away. 

“Derek,” he says, quiet, shaking his head. 

Its enough. Derek nods and hugs him, hard and long and desperate, before Stiles steps back. He pauses, half a step away from gone. Looks back and there's sorrow in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Derek,” he says quietly. 

 

** 

 

There is water in his eyes, as he watches Stiles go, and he tells himself it's the rain and knows damn well that it's a lie. 

 

** 

 

He functions. Sometimes, it's even something that approaches  _ living _ . The first month or so is hard, hard enough that Cora shows up, tan and gorgeous and curls around him on the couch, and he whines into her shoulder, turns to find the sweet scent of her in her neck and he cries, hiding there, while she croons wordless and pets his hair. 

But that eases, the initial screaming emptiness Stiles being gone creates. Enough that he can think about what life post-Stiles should look like. 

The terrifying truth is he doesn't know.  

 

**

 

Beacon Hills, his mother said, from the time he could remember, is Hale territory and ours to protect. 

He joins the sheriff’s office and it  _ hurts _ . Digs deep and twists, being in a place that holds so many memories. He hates it. Hates the stale smell of Stiles and the way the other deputies look at him, sidelong glances of pity that he recognizes from after the fire. This is the same and different, because it doesn't end. 

Stiles is like a ghost that never stops haunting him. 

 

**

 

Sometimes he dreams about them. 

About the way Stiles slept in his arms, his heartbeat a slow steady thing that warms him. 

About the way he watched when Stiles dreamed, his hands wide and expressive, painting a life with Derek and the pack and Beacon Hills, about being his emissary and protecting the little city they called their own. 

He dreams about the way Stiles laughed when Derek kissed him, until the laughter faded into these tiny noises he can’t quite remember anymore. 

He dreams about the day Stiles rolled over in bed, where Derek was waiting, waiting for him to come back, and his face still bore the bruises of the last fight with a wandering omega and his eyes were haunted when he told Derek he was leaving. 

 

**

 

There are memories, everywhere. The preserve where he ran and Stiles laughed, the lacrosse field where he watched Stiles with Scott, the hospital where he held Stiles’ wrist and listened to the young man bitch while he drained away his pain. 

There is the corner where they stood in shadow and rain for two hours, Stiles infuriatingly close, waiting for an omega that he found out later left town three days before. 

There is the theatre Stiles dragged him to when it held a Star Wars revival weekend, and Derek was mesmerized by the lights playing across his face, by the way he was still, except for the twitching of his foot, and the tapping of his fingers, and the way he chewed his way through four straws before he realized Derek was providing them and he had flushed and met Derek’s eyes with a shy smile. 

There is the diner where they fought over a succubus and the cemetery that held both their mothers, and the loft where he first spread Stiles out and stretched him open, held him down and filled him up, and Stiles whimpered and writhed, cursing until his pretty voice broke and he babbled mindless, begging and Derek laughed as he fucked him. 

There is Hale house, where they were almost a family, with the pack. Where Stiles helped him put so much of his life back together. 

There are memories, everywhere, and sometimes it hurts to breathe in this place, so much so that he wants to leave. 

He wants to do what Stiles did. There are times he wants it so damn bad it burns like the change under his skin, and he runs, runs, races through the darkness and the woods and howls his rage and grief and loneliness.

 

**

 

But sometimes, he’s close to happy. 

When Scott comes home, and he’s smiling and smells familiar, like the pack Derek doesn’t have anymore. When Cora calls and tells him she’s met someone and thinks its serious. When Malia gets accepted at a college she has no intention of attending and Peter preens for days. 

When Melissa McCall smiles at him and her eyes aren’t sad. 

Sometimes, he can go almost a whole day before he remembers what’s missing. 

 

**

 

The days after those rare good days are almost worse than the ones right after Stiles left, when he’s wrapped up in guilt and fresh grief and familiar anger. Because how do you forget the thing that brought you to life and how the hell do you get over losing it. 

 

**

 

Their friends will speak about him, cautiously, with a kind of slow hesitance that makes Derek ache, as if they are unsure this new knowledge is welcome, and it hurts. 

They say he is happy--happier--in the east, busy with college, living a life free of the supernatural and danger and life threatening situations. 

They say sometimes he laughs. That he has begun to talk again, a slow easy stream of babble that tells him more than anything that Stiles is better there. 

That he is fine. 

The silent weeks before he left--Derek never wants to hear Stiles that quiet ever again. 

But it hurts and sometimes he wonders how Stiles can be fine, how he can be  _ happy _ , how he can walk away from  _ them _ unscathed. 

How is he fine, when Derek is a shattered mess still piecing himself together and knowing it will never be a complete picture, not with the best part of his soul living a  _ happy  _ life out east. 

 

**

 

Sometimes, his phone will ring and he will answer, blurry with sleep and listen to the sound of a city on the other end of the line, the quiet absence of breath and voice. 

Sometimes, when that happens, he talks. More often, though, he merely breathes and drifts back to sleep to the sound of a heartbeat he knows better than his own. 

It’s only when he’s sleeping again, that he dreams he hears Stiles whispering words he doesn’t believe. 

Not anymore. 

 

**

 

Derek spends more time than he likes to think about wishing he could get drunk and the rest of the time glad he’s a werewolf and  _ can’t _ be an alcoholic. 

Still, Peter arrives at his loft on a bright day in May, and hands him a milk jug that sloshes ominously. 

Derek glances at it and then his uncle and Peter shrugs. “If you know the right people and pay the right price, even a werewolf can get drunk.” Peter says, adding seriously, “You’re going to need to be drunk tomorrow, Derek,” 

Tomorrow, Derek realizes, late, late enough that he is both nauseous and grateful--Peter is right. 

He drinks the Wolfsbane and sits in the loft that smells faintly, so fucking faintly, of  _ them _ and remembers the first time. 

They were bloody and Stiles was laughing when Derek looked at him, his face alight the way it was after they successfully defeated something monstrous that threatened the people Stiles loved, and he looked at Derek, alive and so goddamn beautiful Derek didn’t think about it. He moved, fast enough that he got a flash of wide eyes and a quick scent of terror and determination, and then there was only  _ Stiles,  _ pressed between him and the wall, and all he could  _ taste _ was Stiles, all he could feel was the warm length of his body, bucking against his, and his tongue, oh his tongue was in Derek’s mouth and he should have known Stiles would be wily and clever, but it takes him a second to wrap his head around it and Stiles is a  _ fucking asshole, _ because he’s using that time, uses it to work Derek’s pants open, reach in and wrap around him and Derek gasps as he bucks into that long fingered grip, into the sure stroke and the wicked laugh it earns him. 

“Come on, big guy. Show me what you like,” Stiles murmurs in his ear, and Derek whines, driven past words as Stiles rubs a thumb over the head of his cock. 

After, much later, after Stiles sucked him off and rubbed against him, voice and hips stuttering into incoherent babble as he came against the cradle of Derek’s hip, Derek had kissed him and bitten at his neck and Stiles had hummed, a happy noise, and said, “This isn’t how I expected it to go.” 

Derek never thought about it, before that day in the loft, and never considered how it would end, never considered that it could. 

He sits in his empty loft, drunk and sad and wonders if this is the end that Stiles expected. 

 

**

 

The day that Derek hears Stiles is dating someone--and of course he hears, it’s Beacon Hills and he listens for Stiles, even if he doesn’t actually intend to anymore--is the first time he wishes he could forget. 

Not just the time they were together and happy. 

It’s the first time he wishes he could forget everything. He wishes he could forget Stiles. 

 

**

 

He visits Sheriff Stilinski, sometimes. Long quiet afternoons in the sun and the wind and one memorable rainy birthday spent brooding next to the old man before he finally retreats. 

He always feels like he’s disappointed the older man, after. He wishes  _ I’m sorry _ fixed something. 

Fixed anything at all. 

 

**

 

“It gets easier,” Melissa McCall tells him. 

“You’ll find someone new,” Scott says. 

“Wolves,” Peter broods, quieter than Derek has ever heard him, “mate for life.” 

Derek thinks that might be the worst thing he’s ever heard. 

And he heard Stiles scream, that night. The night that ended everything, the night that John Stilinski was killed.

 

**

 

The sheriff's office is quiet, on the anniversary, and Derek is almost ignored. No one blames him, he knows that, but he blames himself, and he relegates himself to his corner desk and watches silently as they move around him, his co-workers and the people he could almost call friends. 

When they visit the grave later that day, in all the regalia and honor that the fallen Sheriff deserves, Derek stays behind and wishes like hell he could have saved Stiles’ father. 

Later, when he’s so tired his body aches and the day has ended and the Sheriff is still dead--Derek returns home and finds Cora and Scott, finds Isaac and Peter, the tiny remnants of a pack, and he smiles, and for once it doesn’t feel like a lie, even though it hurts. 

 

**

 

The anniversary of Stiles leaving him, leaving the town he grew up in and the father he couldn’t save and the dreams that shattered when John fell--Derek starts drinking before the sun rises and doesn’t stop until he falls, staggers into a wall, and goes down hard, and even then, he can’t stop begging for Stiles to come back. 

 

**

 

Time passes and it’s not easier. But it numbs and somehow that is worse and better at the same time. 

The phone calls never stop. Even when he hears Stiles is with someone else--and that seems to be a steady revolving door of quasi-serious relationships that self-destruct before they can blossom into anything lasting--the phone calls never stop. 

Sometimes, a text will arrive, wordless pictures of a life he is not included in, not invited to, except in this small way. 

Derek prints them, frames them, hangs them in the house. 

It isn’t the same as having Stiles, but if it’s all he’s allowed, then he’ll take it and make it as big as he can. 

If it hurts, seeing the world through Stiles eyes, he doesn’t say and no one has been idiotic enough to ask. 

 

**

 

It takes almost eighteen months to date and it ends badly, with him bolting halfway through dinner, seconds away from wolfing out. He threw up in the street, and ran for hours, until Peter howling drew him out of his dizzying spiral of thoughts. 

Six months later, it is easier, but still. Every easy smile and soft warm body, every innocent comment and wide eyed silence is a reminder of who isn’t there, what he is missing. 

He isn’t celibate, because he is a young man and he  _ likes _ sex, on occasion, and because Stiles had made a choice. 

But he didn’t search for relationships and the one night stands he indulged on the rare occasion were always just that--a single night in her bed before he snuck out and walked home and washed the scent of her away. 

He didn’t smell like Stiles anymore and the worst part was--he is beginning to forget what Stiles smelled like. 

 

**

 

The pictures sometimes include Scott or Isaac and once, memorably, Malia, and Derek hates those pictures. 

Sometimes, he hates Stiles. Hates him for leaving. Hates him for being happy when Derek is here, not really living, loving a man he can no longer have. 

Sometimes he wonders if he dreamt it, all of it, the whole blissful year together, the way Stiles curled into him when he slept, the way he stumbled into the kitchen when Derek was making breakfast, how it was the only time he ever was close to silent, his words stripped away to an incoherent mumble as he fumbled for coffee that Derek learned quickly should be half-caf. 

But then he’ll get a phone call on New Year’s Eve, or a photo of a endless starry sky, or the stream of postcards and photos on the anniversary of the fire, and he’ll know that even when he wishes it was a hallucination, a fever dream, it was real. 

It was real and good and now it’s gone. 

 

**

 

Three years fades slowly into four and Peter shows up with his now customary jug of Wolfsbane. Derek shakes his head. “I want to be sober,” he says. 

Peter watches him, assessing and it amuses Derek even as it warms him, because his uncle is still taking care of him, even now that he is the Alpha and Peter the beta. 

It’s nice, though, to be taken care of. 

 

**

 

Once upon a lifetime ago, Derek told Scott that anger was an anchor and Scott told him that Allison was. 

At the time, he didn’t understand it. 

But as he let’s the change slide over him, more than four years since Stiles left, it isn’t anger or grief or the rage that has long burned out that anchors him in his self, that leashes his wolf. 

It’s the love he had felt. 

It’s the love he still feels. 

Stiles left him and sometimes he wishes he could forget everything. 

But Stiles is still the one keeping him human. 

 

**

 

The phone calls and the pictures end. It takes him almost three months to realize, and when he does, it hurts. Both that it has been so long and that Stiles has--finally--moved on.

The number has always been blocked, giving Stiles all of the control in their sporadic communication. He cannot even reach out, not even  _ now, _ years after Stiles left him, years after Stiles moved away and fell in love with someone else and built a life that didn’t include him. 

 

**

 

The leaves are falling when Stiles comes home.

He doesn’t understand, at first. 

It has been four years, five months, and three days since he stood in the rain and watched Stiles leave him. 

It doesn’t make sense, what he is seeing now. 

Stiles looks older, tired. Sad and hopeful and nervous, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he pushes off his jeep. 

His hair is longer, shaggy in a way Derek has never seen. He doesn’t look like a boy anymore, the last of his baby fat carved away by time and a life Derek doesn’t know. 

He still looks like the man Derek loved, and he still smells the same. 

Wild and dangerous and sweet, like ash and honey and summer wind. 

And he’s watching Derek, nervous and hopeful and anxious, framed by autumn leaves and sunlight.

“Are you here to stay?” Derek asks, the first thing he says, the question that matters most. 

Stiles shrugs and bites his lip and Derek’s hands have shifted, claws out, fuck, he’s shifting and he can’t even stop it. “If you want me to stay,” Stiles says, like he’s unsure of his welcome, like he could ever be unsure of that, of all fucking things. 

Derek moves, and Stiles reaches to meet him and oh god, yes this, this is what has been missing. 

This taste, this heat, this man, the fucking breath in his goddamn lungs, and it’s been missing for four  _ years _ . Stiles kisses him, and it’s like--it’s like coming to life, and Derek can feel every wrong thing settle. Slip and slide back into place as Stiles sucks on his tongue and hums that appreciative noise that he hears sometimes in his dreams, in the best dreams, and for a heart stoppingly terrifying moment, he thinks--

“Am I dreaming?” he demands, pulling back and he doesn’t think he could stand it if he was. 

Even in the best dreams, he can’t  _ smell _ Stiles. 

“No, big guy,” Stiles says, soft and sweet, too understanding. “No, I’m here. I’m home.” 

And Derek pulls him close, buries his nose in Stiles neck to get that delicious scent of him and lets go of the grief and loneliness, the ache that has been his constant companion, and clings to  _ this _ . 

The sun is shining and his face is wet and Stiles has come home to him. 


End file.
